A VOICE OF REASON AMID ANTI-CORTINA HYSTERIA IN 1860

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

Following the taking of Brownsville by Juan Napomuceno "Cheno" Cortina and his followers on September 28, 1859, most narratives generated by local officials and residents who called for the Texas Rangers and for U.S. Army to be stationed at the old Ft. Brown were exaggerated and hysterical pleas for assistance claiming imminent destruction at his hands. 

Few, if any newspapers, reported on the Mexican complaints of their treatment in the hands of lawyers and American newcomers to the area. Those who did were few and far between.

This clipping, found in her research by Dr. Maria Theresa Hernandez, a professor in the World Cultures and Literatures Department at University of Houston, is one of the few accounts that actually speak to Cortina's objections and  complaints by local Mexican-Americans subjected to thefts and abuse at the hand of American settlers, lawyers, and officials. 

The report from the Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky) was published on January 4, 1860, just a little over three months that Cortina and his 70 followers occupied Brownsville and sought their enemies.

The Courier-Journal cites "a letter from San Antonio dated Dec. 15 (1859) which denies some of the recent reports concerning Cortina; 

"It says: 'he is a Mexican-Texan; that he owns, on the left bank  (U.S.) of the Rio Grande, 11 leagues of land (63360.3 acres); that he is a man of resolution, but not at all a conqueror or a brigand.

'It appears that the sheriff and some other legal officers have practiced a system of intimidation, more or less violent, on certain Mexican-Texans, whose principal crime was owning lands, with which they would like to disgust them, so as to make them sell them for a trifle, a system of speculation which has often succeeded in this latitude.

'Cortina, having had annoyances of this type offered to himself or some of his people, and having vainly sought redress from the law, whose agents, for good reasons, were little disposed to listen to his complaints, had announced his determination to take the justice denied him, and he went to work to do it, threatening, however, only those of which he had a right to complain. 

'In this, he made reprisals, and impartial people regard him as much more honest than those whose exactions, outrages, and even (assassinations ?) have driven him to arms.'"

"Another correspondent of the Courier, writing from the Rio Grande December 8th (1859), says Cortina 'has been deprived by the lawyers of the greater part of his family property; to avenge himself he is making war on the lawyers. 

'It appears that he also has an account to settle with the Rio Grande Steamboat Company, as he has declared that he will sink the first steamer that passes his ranch. The people on the river are in a deplorable condition. Groceries have risen enormously. Coffee sells at 50 cents a pound; corn 62 and one-half cents, and for eight days we have had no flour.'

"The same writer complains of the conduct of the Mexican soldiers sent by General Carajal
(General José Carvajal) to assist in resisting Cortina. He thinks also that the outcry about Cortina is got up with a view to proposing the annexation of Sierra Madre, or of Tamaulipas and New Leon, as rallying cries for the next presidential election."